Hi Reader,

Happy Friday!

Thank you to everyone who submitted a Freelance Money Diaries entry last week, super grateful to you!

If you haven't yet and would like to (anonymously is fine!), you can do so here.

In the meantime, I've just published a brand new episode of the It's Fine, I'm a Freelancer podcast that takes you behind the scenes of my six figure freelance writing business.

I cover everything from what my client roster looks like and how I keep clients coming back month after month, to how I find work (spoiler: it's changed dramatically over 13 years), and the one thing I wish I'd done differently from the very beginning. You can listen to it here (or wherever you consume your podcasts!).

P.S. This week on Instagram, I shared a few reasons I've turned down freelance work. Check it out here. And don't forget to give me a follow for regular tips and tricks!

Here's what I've been up to this week work-wise:

👉 I refreshed 3 pieces for Shopify

👉 I wrote a net new piece for Shopify

👉 I polished up an ebook and an article refresh for Klaviyo

👉 I guested on a podcast

👉 I held a freelance mentoring session (last one of this batch!)

⏱ Approx hours spent on client work this week: ~26

⏱ Approx hours spent on non-client work: ~4

💰 Total revenue this week: £3,750

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Check out my three practical courses that have helped 500+ people get more clients, earn more money, and create better content.

Friday Freelance Tip​​ ✨ ​

A conversation I had recently with a couple of fellow freelancers has been rattling around in my head ever since.

We got onto the subject of learning (or rather, how little of it we actually do) and the more we talked, the more I realised that there's a big ol' professional development gap us freelancers face.

Thinking about it, I've spoken a LOT about this recently, including at a freelance forum last week, where we workshopped what it means to work ON our business rather than IN our business.

And, it's actually something that I think is a huge disadvantage for us freelancers.

Unlike employees, we don't have a boss to pay for courses for us to take, and when we ARE learning and developing professionally, we're not getting paid. Not to mention that conferences often bear a huge price tag for freelancers, which is a cost employers would usually absorb.

Now, I don’t want this to be a piece that just enumerates the unfairness of it all. What I’d rather do is think about how we might approach this differently.

A small reframe I’ve found useful is that professional development doesn’t have to look like professional development.

For employees, it comes in recognisable packages, like a day out of office, a webinar link, a CPD certificate, you know the drill.

For freelancers, it can be far more granular and far more integrated into the work itself, if we’re intentional about it. It could be a conversation with a peer in a different sector, or an hour spent pulling apart how a competitor communicates their offer, or reading that article you bookmarked three months ago and actually, finally, making notes.

Sure, none of these things get us a certificate at the end or a graduation ceremony or even the ability to add something new to our LinkedIn profiles and CVs. But they're a step in the right direction.

The problem is... how do we even know where to start?

“Do some development” isn't particularly actionable advice. The harder question is: what kind?

With limited time and limited budget, this becomes a genuine strategic exercise.

My loose framework goes something like this"

• What’s the gap between where I am and where my best clients want me to be? What are my best clients asking for that I feel slightly under-equipped to deliver?
• What’s the gap between where I am and where I want to take my work? Freelancing gives us a latitude that employment doesn’t, and that's the ability to steer toward the kind of work we actually want to do. Development that closes the gap between your current practice and your desired one is a good investment in your own career direction.
• What’s changing in my field that I don’t yet understand well enough? What things are moving fast but that you kinda need to understand to stay abreast of your industry? For most freelancers right now, this is unavoidably AI (sorry).

This brings me to the other thread of that conversation. Alongside the professional development question, we found ourselves talking about AI, and how we’re all using it. Or trying to.

I’ll be honest, I use Claude regularly: for research, for outlining, for generating ideas when I’m stuck, for finding credible sources to anchor an argument, for thinking through a topic before I write. It has genuinely changed how I work.

But I’m also aware that I’m not using it anywhere near its full capacity. I know it could be doing far more for the running of my business, like admin workflows, client comms, operational tasks, and tasks that I just generally... don't enjoy.

I know there are ways to make it dramatically more useful as a business tool, but I just haven’t had the time to figure out how and I can't see when I will.

(Lol, there’s an irony in the fact that learning to use AI more effectively is itself a professional development task I haven’t been able to prioritise).

I suspect I’m not alone in this. The gap between “using AI a bit” and “using AI really well” is pretty big and getting bigger. For us freelancers who don’t have IT departments or lunch-and-learns or colleagues to learn from, closing that gap requires deliberate effort that we have to create ourselves.

The practical question, then, is how?!?!

Here are a few things that I'm trying to work on or what I know other freelancers are doing.

Small, regular commitments beat a big, irregular one.

A thirty-minute protected slot three times a week adds up to roughly seventy-five hours of learning over a year.

Anchor your development to tasks you're already doing.

Habits, habits, habits, my friends. Some freelancers I know spend the first twenty minutes of Monday morning reading one industry piece. Others use the slower pace of admin afternoons. Do what works best for you.

Lean on peers to talk shop.

One conversation with a thoughtful peer in your field can sometimes be more significant and insightful than three sub-par courses (and trust me, I've done a fair few sub-par courses). Look for small accountability groups or informal peer learning - heck, get your freelance pals to the pub once a week to talk shop.

Let clients pay for your learning, where you can.

Sometimes a client might be receptive to paying for you to learn on the job. This might be webinar that'll help you understand their sector better or a tool you can use to speed up part of your work.

Give yourself permission to be a student.

This is the least practical tip, but here we are. Freelancing can make you risk-averse about being a beginner, because being a beginner doesn’t feel like something clients would pay good money for. But the ability to approach something you don’t yet know with genuine curiosity is a professional skill in itself, and one worth practising.

This week, we have Kyle Rushton McGregor, an analytics consultant from the Orkney Islands.

Where are you based? Orkney Islands, Scotland.

How long have you been freelancing? 5 years.

What do you do? B2B comms in the property industry.

What's your revenue? 2025 was £131,392.26.

Kyle freelancer freelances full time and this was his highest earning year.

How much did you take as a salary?

I'm now paying myself £48,000 - this is to ensure I'm putting a lot away into my stocks and shares ISA. My savings rate is 34%. We are also doing a lot of travel this year and next so want to be able to afford that. As well as this, my business pays £1000 into my pension each month.

How much did you pay in taxes?

Paying VAT, Income Tax and Personal Tax. 20% on VAT, 19% on corporate income tax, I live in Scotland so my tax rate is up to 42%. I'm happy to pay that level of tax - it's a sign of a civilised society in my opinion.

What are your business expenses?

My outgoings are actually very low - I pay for most things yearly because there's a cost saving there. My yearly costs that are then divided by 12 months is £533 I'm looking to reduce some of that as I use the features in my Google Workspace to cut down on other tools.

I have one subcontractor that I use for content work for some of my legacy clients. That would be around £5000 for the year.
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Do you contribute to a pension or invest?

A private pension of £1000 a month.

We have Monzo that allows us to add 'pots' so every invoice 45% goes into a tax and savings pot. When that reaches £5000 it gets transferred to a high yield savings account (I say high yield, it's 3.5%)

Do you have any hot money-management tips?

Review your outgoings regularly and cut out those subscriptions you don't need! Put a reminder in your diary every quarter to review. If you've got subscriptions, consider if they can be reduced by using other features in other tools you pay for. I saved myself about £70 a month just by cutting out subscriptions that I already get within my Google Workspace.

We need more Freelance Money Diaries entries! I'm forever grateful to anyone who shares their finances with us (you can do it totally anonymously!).

Click the button below to do yours!

As always, happy freelancing :)

Lizzie ✨

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